Facebook is rolling out its new Photo Sync feature to its iOS users that automatically uploads all photos taken on the iPhone to a private photo album on Facebook. The idea is to make it easier and faster for users to share photos with their friends.

Quote:

When you turn on photo syncing, your mobile photos will be saved to a private section of your Facebook Photos. You can easily share your synced photos on your timeline from desktop, mobile, or another device.

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Only you can see the photos you've synced from your phone. Your photos are saved privately in a section of your Facebook Photos that only you can see. When you view your synced photos, you can choose shots to share or send in a private message.

Facebook's support site has much more about Photo Sync. Facebook is using background uploads within the Facebook iOS app to move the photos, not anything special with location APIs or Apple's iOS 6 Facebook integration.

The app is very clear that all photos uploaded automatically are marked as private and cannot be viewed by others until specifically shared by the user. Users get 2 GB of complimentary photo storage.

didn't google do this recently with G+ by just autosharing all mobile photos to G+ until people flipped out about it?

Yes the Google+ app will automatically upload all your pictures unless you tell it not to.

Facebook and Google both make their money by having as much information about you as possible. The more they get, the more they can sell it and make. It also ties you to them so they don't lose you as a revenue stream. If all your information is on their site, it makes it a big pain to take it all and move it elsewhere so most people won't bother and will just stay.

The average user will see this as a huge convenience; especially the people who just upload everything to the internet anyways

I agree, actually I was one of the 'lucky' ones and have been uploading for the week now, it really is convenient to have them all upload. Just wish their was an option on the sidebar for quicker/easier access. And it'd be nice to be able to rotate the pictures!

I don't think I'll use it for long, but could see me setting this up for my mom, she almost lives on Facebook and always complains she doesn't understand how to get photos from her iPhone to her MacBook, this would be great for her.

I sure as heck didn't enable this and I can't think of any possible scenario where I would.

I guess Facebook built this feature for the person who doesn't trust Apple enough to enable Photo Stream; but yet they trust Facebook enough to share every single picture they have on their phones with them?

*EDIT: According to avanpelt's post and other reports, it appears to be opt-in. Thank you for the clarification. Although I still stand by my arguments against it ever being opt-out, this is not the case currently. I had read that Google+ was not and Facebook's description of the feature doesn't make this clear. It's apparently opt-in though; that's the way it should be, and let's hope it stays that way.

*How can it possibly be legal for an application to upload all your photos without your permission?

One day, the application doesn't upload all your photos. The next day, it does. When you download updates, there is not a new TOS you have to sign granting it permission to do so. Even if there is some legalese buried in the original TOS that allows them to do this in future, any change that so egregiously infringes on consumer privacy should at the very least be required to be opt-in.

If you like the idea and think it's an exciting new addition, fine -- there can be an option click to allow Facebook to upload all your photos. This should not be the default; they do not own my phone or my photos.

Last edited by autrefois; Dec 2, 2012 at 08:27 AM.
Reason: Updated x 2 with further confirmation of it being opt-in

How can it possibly be legal for an application to upload all your photos without your permission?

I believe you do explicitly have to give permission. When I launched the Facebook app earlier today, it prompted me to either "Try it" or "Cancel" the new syncing feature. I opted to cancel.

When I go to my profile in the Facebook app and tap Photos, there is now a third tab at the bottom, "Synced". I have to explicitly click the "Sync Photos" button under that tab before the feature is enabled. I suspect you're able to revoke the syncing at any time, but I'm sure Facebook will keep multiple copies of any photo that's previously been uploaded to their servers.